


Suspension (Short Poem/Story)

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Cringe, Depression, POV Second Person, Unreliable Narrator, Vignette, possibly a metaphor?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:01:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24639604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: My first and last story.This story came from a dream I had at 4am. It scared me and made me want to write it down and make a story out of it. It ended up becoming somewhat of a vent after it was edited.You'll probably like it. You probably won't. I hope it doesn't come off as too edgy or anything.





	Suspension (Short Poem/Story)

It starts when your hair falls out.

It comes out in clumps when you take a shower.

Maybe you pulled too hard, or you weren’t eating right.

Your last thought was cancer.

You don’t tell anyone about it.

You start to panic when a huge chunk is missing; half of your scalp is bare.

You rush to the hospital.

They run tests. 

You stay overnight. 

They send you home with the promise of results.

You hunger and thirst, but you’re too weak to leave the bed. Invisible thorns are woven into your joints and limbs, cutting deep with every movement. 

Your breath is fast and shallow, pinching sharply when you breathe too deep.

This was it. Cancer. You were going to die.

The doctors tell you to come back in a week. You can barely stand when you arrive.

Then out of nowhere, it stops. 

… It just… stops.

You feel fine.

“There’s nothing we can do.” They send you home again.

Your hair is still gone. You wear hats to hide the fact.

A month passes. It still hasn’t grown back.

Your stomach feels like a giant bruise, a dull ache in the background. It flares in pain and rejects anything you force down.

If it’s not cancer, what is it?

They keep you on meds and watch you closely.

They don’t know what they’re dealing with.

Hours slowly tick by in the hospital. You watch the clock with bated breath. 

Impending doom tingles in your gut. Death is approaching, isn’t it?

When will this be over?

When will it be over with?

You’re nauseous with anxiety.

You feel better. Then you don’t. The pain is on and off, but the anxiety remains.

The doctor sends you home with a friend. She promises to help you through this.

You spend time researching, trying to find people like yourself. You want answers that the doctors can’t give.

The internet doesn’t help. Your thoughts spiral out of control from the results. 

Maybe you touched a fungus, or a mold, maybe you were stung by something. 

Maybe your genes were set for destruction since the beginning, maybe they were destined to kill you agonizingly slow.

Or maybe you’re overthinking; all of this is a hallucination - a dream. It’s all in your head. You’re making it worse.

You go to the beach to take things off your mind.

After everything that’s happened, the beach is so much different. You don’t know why.

You feel welcome.

The aches melt away when you take a swim, the water is a cold relief to your feverish skin.

When you return at sundown, your aches reignite and your chest is heavy with sorrow; she pulls you to shore.

You feel disjointed and misplaced when you sit at dinner.

Your hands and feet are bruised purple and red. You don’t know what happened. What you did to deserve this.

She fusses over you and bandages your wounds. You feel strange seeing them wrapped up.

You wake up in the morning and find your hands bloody and raw, nails were torn and fingers broken.

You’ve been through worse, so it doesn’t even bother you.

You're more fascinated than afraid.

You notice something when you wipe the blood away, it shines and sprawls like a spidery web. 

Between your fingers are strips of flesh stretching between each digit. Like a frog.

Surreal.

You don’t mind, it looks as if it always belonged.

You wrap your hands, then your equally bloody feet. 

You find it odd how your hands don’t hurt, despite the shattered bone and bloody bruises.

She doesn’t notice.

You have vivid dreams of becoming a sea creature - like a mermaid. That you were stolen at birth to live life as a human, but return to the sea after a painful transformation.

You visit the beach every day. She watches from the shoreline and calls out to you when it grows cold and dim.

Your skin is pruny from spending hours in the water. Your aches are gone for now.

On good days, you don’t even need a wheelchair. You’re recovering.

Then you’re proved wrong on the bad ones when you can hardly think or move beyond the fog of pain.

It gets worse. More of your days are spent crying in bed, drenched in tears and sweat.

You have a fever.

She spoon-feeds you and wipes your forehead with a rag.

You hate the pitiful look in her eyes.

You cling onto the mermaid fantasy. There’s nothing else to look forward to.

The doctor comes and goes. But you never notice. All is the same in your world of fever dreams and pain.

You recover again. You always do. A never-ending cycle of relief, hope, and inevitable misery.

You want it to end. You hate living life like this.

You wake up after another ocean fantasy. It’s dark outside the window, but the haunting full moon is alive and bright, filling you with nostalgia and sorrow.

You want to swim like in your dreams.

You slide into the wheelchair and make your way through the quiet halls.

She’s asleep in bed, her cheeks are soaked in tears and her hair is unkempt; your heart sinks.

Her pity for you is venomous; you're both miserable, her old life is stolen because of you. And you alone.

You wheel your way down the porch.

You can hear the waves crashing against the rocky outcropping, feel it, taste it. The salt and spray of the waves.

It’s calling out to you.

In a feverish fog, you obey.

The ocean is loud with excitement.

The moonlight bleeds through wispy clouds and dances between violent waves. The sea looks like a plate of glass, reflecting the deep dark of a starless sky.

This moment is too precious to waste. No time to hesitate or overthink.

You overlook a rocky cliffside, your feet barely dangling over the edge.

Jagged rocks jut from the bubbling waves like a graveyard of knives.

You want to disappear. Fade away. Vanish. Erase the burdens you have on other people. On her.

In the presence of the sea, you feel like you belong. You have a purpose, a meaning. You're a smaller gear in a grander machine. 

You’re not a burden or a pity. As long as you return to the sea.

Someone, maybe the sea, calls for you. They need you. They love you.

The voice is familiar.

You slip.

You don’t know if you miss the rocks or not. Your senses are overwhelmed with water and fear.

Your lungs fill with saltwater and burn as if you’ve inhaled smoke. You try to move and swim, like in your dreams, but you only sink faster.

The wheelchair smacks into you and you spin out of control.

Your head collides with a rock, your head pounds with pain. All you can hear is roaring bubbles from above.

Everything is gone. You can’t see or smell.

It’s too much. You hopelessly gasp again - water fills your chest and weighs you down more. You feel like a giant stone. 

It’s pointless.

The sea cradles your sleepy body as you slip into the dark, the moonlight fading at your fingertips.

The saltwater burns your eyes as you open them, but you can barely feel it. 

You’re deep below the surface. 

The world beneath is calm. The screaming waves fall into a buzz in the background.

You’re underwater, you finally realize. But you can’t comprehend it.

You’re drowning, but you don’t care. Thoughts and emotions are miles away, a faint noise like the muffled waves.

Your body is cold. It drifts into the yawning void below.

Everything is still. Suspended in time.

You belong.


End file.
